


My Soul Is Turning in Your Hand

by galacticproportions



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Do They Or Don't They, Gen, Guilt, I love that "late night conversations" is a tag, Introspection, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9136774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: I thought we could use you,Cassian thinks,and I was right.He's sick of being right.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bomberqueen17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/gifts).



> This isn't fluffy, but I hope it's somewhat tender? Bitterly tender? Anyway, B, this is for you, hope you enjoy it.

Cassian Andor bitterly resents his body's need for sleep. It's a waste of time. And much like the cigarras he quit because the smoke soaked into his clothes and hair and gave him away on covert missions, he doesn't feel better when he has it, but he feels much worse when he misses it. Back from Eadu, the Senator ordered him to sleep before they gather to make a decision, so that's what he'll do. But he doesn't have to like it, or go quickly to his bed.

He runs across the pilot—Bodhi, that's his name—standing indecisively at the junction of two corridors. “You lost?”

“They told me I could find a bed down this way.” Cassian's having a hard time getting a bead on this guy. In the cell on Jedha, he'd seemed like a husk, depleted and apathetic from his encounter with Saw's _fucking_ psychic interrogator—Cassian has no illusions left about himself and what he's willing to do, but he hopes he never gets to the point where signing someone up for mind-violation makes the list. Then again, there's things he's done this solar cycle that he'd have placed in that class last time around.

At the controls, Bodhi was competent, but twitchy. Looking at him now, the embodiment of hesitation, you wouldn't guess he defected from an Imperial base in an Imperial ship to bring anti-Imperial information to the Rebellion, insisted on delivering it even when the people he was bringing it to manhandled and tortured and imprisoned him.

“There's some empty beds on this corridor,” Cassian says, pointing. He figures he doesn't have to go into what freed them up. “Empty rooms, even, I think. Get some rest.” He turns toward his own quarters, down the other corridor, but Bodhi is still standing there.

“You talked to me,” Bodhi says. “When I was, well, I heard you. And you got me out of there. I appreciate it.”

 _I thought we could use you,_ Cassian thinks, _and I was right._

He's sick of being right.

He says, “You're welcome.”

Neither of them move.

He says, “Look, do you want to—sit, or something?”

Bodhi looks alarmed. How can you _possibly_ be shaken by an invitation to sit down? It's true that they've all had a long day, in which nearly everything else that's happened has been alarming. Cassian says, “Come this way,” and Bodhi follows him.

Out on the loading dock, a double row of guiding lights provides the only illumination, and the cranes and waldoes loom in shadow. It's overcast, as it often is here at night—no stars to be seen. Shadows are velvety and deep, and the duracrete is already pitting and rotting from the moisture though it's only a solar cycle old. The people who used to live here built in stone.

This is where Cassian used to come for a smoke when he had time, when he smoked. They don't take a lot of night deliveries—day deliveries either, for that matter—so it's almost always quiet, and quiet is how it is now, just the sounds of night insects, and their own steps.

They sit, legs hanging over the edge. “Tomorrow they'll decide what to do about the message I brought,” Bodhi says. “Is that right?”

“More or less. I already know some will be for action, and some against it. I even know who, probably.”

A pause. “Sure, of course. Not everyone agrees. I don't know why I thought they would.”

“How do they talk about us, over there?” Cassian asks. “Did you hear much of that?” He's been called “rebel scum” more times than he can count, usually while getting hit in the face after getting caught on purpose, but that's just the short, cut-rate version. He doesn't know what a cargo pilot would get to hear, how compartmentalized things are, not like here where everybody does everything.

“They don't, that much, at least to me. Not you specifically. There's the Empire, and then there's—not the Empire yet. I mostly—I was the guy with the manifests, you know? So I'd hear, 'unrest' or I'd hear 'rebel activity', about why they were changing the route, or sending me this place or that place. But then Galen Erso came and signed for a delivery of kyber crystals and I.” He stops. “We had to take them from the Temple. From Jedha City, which is where I'm—So I maybe wasn't doing that well, and he asked me if I needed anything.”

“And now here you are.” And now there is no more Jedha City.

“And now here I am. And you're telling me it might be for no reason, right, they might decide not to—I was sort of hoping that when I made my choice, it'd be over, that'd be all I'd have to do. You know?”

“Yeah. It isn't like that. You keep making choices. Until you die.”

“I'm not afraid of dying,” Bodhi says, but he's afraid of something, because he's shaking.

The last person Cassian was gentle with, he killed. He's not sure he'll be able to do it right, or to sustain it for long. But he lays his hand over Bodhi's where it's splayed and tense on the surface of the loading dock, and the pilot exhales, more breath than Cassian would have thought he could keep in that lean body. He tries an arm around the shoulders next, asks, “This okay?”

“Yeah, fine, fine.” The shaking doesn't really stop, and Bodhi stays rigid, but it still feels like something's happening—not something important, something small and quiet. Bodhi says, “You've been doing this a long time,” meaning fighting, Cassian presumes, not holding people. He says, “A long time.”

“I haven't,” Bodhi says. “You can probably tell. Pick this up, drop this off, don't ask questions. And I didn't. Until Galen started talking about what they were building, what I was helping them build.”

“You hadn't even wondered,” Cassian says dryly.

“I had wondered. I just hadn't _asked._ But once Galen started describing it, what it could do—I'd known, right, before that, I just hadn't let myself. I don't know if you know how that is.”

Cassian probably did once know how that was, but he doesn't remember. Bodhi is talking about Galen's gentleness and his patience and his _courage,_ what an honor it was to know him _,_ and it slowly dawns on Cassian that they could have sex tonight, if he wanted to, that Bodhi is (surprisingly efficiently) conveying both _I'm attracted to men_ and _I'm grieving and don't want to be alone._ But to Cassian, even though he didn't take the shot, Galen Erso is the man who designed the Death Star, and all the people who helped to build it are the people who helped to build it. He says to Bodhi, “What you did, leaving to get the message out, that's brave. He stayed there. He might've built a flaw into it, but he _built_ it.”

“What would you have done?” Bodhi says with as much heat as Cassian's heard from him yet. But he doesn't shake off Cassian's arm or pull away.

“Killed myself, probably.” He says it without thinking, which means that he must have already thought about and decided it, deep down. The lullaby pill in the shoulder of his jacket has its own special gravity, like a bolt arrested there by the Force on the way to his heart. Only a matter of time.

“He asked me to,” Bodhi says after another long pause. “Early on, before he figured out that they could've built it without him. He said if I could drop a shipment of ore or something on him, or use one of the cranes, make it look like an accident—I couldn't do it.”

“Well,” Cassian says, “I guess we have that in common.” Bodhi looks at him. “You know I went there to kill him.”

“To Eadu, yeah, I know. You didn't, though. The Alliance strike force did. Didn't they?”

“Yes, but how—“ _How can you have loved him_ , he means, _how can you sit here now with a killer's arm around you? Don't you know what I am? What you'll become, if you stick with us, if we don't die tomorrow?_

“He didn't send me,” Bodhi says. “I wanted to come. I offered.” It's so much like an answer to his thoughts that Cassian wonders for a moment if Bodhi can read his mind with the Force, but maybe it's just that their thoughts are running along similar lines. Parallel. Touching? The shaking has stopped, he realizes now, and wonders when that happened.

And then there's a moment when he realizes he's been drooping, leaning his head on a bony shoulder exactly like someone who remembers how to trust, and Bodhi's saying, “Where's your bed, Cassian? Or wherever you want to be. I'll get you there, just show me where to go.”

 


End file.
